iorace Greeley 
Centenary 



pographical Union No. 6 




c 



i 



One Hundredth Anniversary 



of the Birth of 



Horace Greeley 

" ^ First President of 



Typographical Union No. 6 




New York Theatre 

February 5, 1911 



Under the Auspices of "Big 6" 






i^ 










HORACE GREELEY 



A rare photograph of Mr. Greeley, taken in 1850. while president of the 
New York Printers' Union. 



The Formation of Typographical Union No. 6 

By GEORGE A. STEVENS 

At the close of 1849 the New York Prmters' Union (which became Typo- 
graphical Union No. 6 when the National Typographical Union was founded 
in 1852) was in a formative state. It had adopted a constitution, and under 
the provisions of that fundamental law the first regular session of the union 
convened at Stoneall's Hotel, 131 Fulton Street, on Saturday evening, Janu- 
ary 19, 1850. The important business of that meeting was the election of 
officers for the succeeding yearly term. 

Horace Greeley had been invited to accept the Presidency of the young 
organization, and he had cheerfully consented to serve in that capacity. 
He Avas therefore chosen unanimously, as were also these other officers: 
Vice-President, Edgar H. Rogers ; Recording Secretary, William H. Prindle : 
Financial Secretary, R. Cunnington ; Corresponding Secretary, George 
Johnson ; Treasurer, Thomas N. Rooker. 

It was quite natural for the organized printers to select Horace Greeley 
as their first presiding officer, because he already had been prominently 
identified wnth workingmen's movements in a number of trades to better 
their social and economic condition. He favored united action on their part. 
Not alone in the editorial columns of the Tribune did he urge that only 
through associated effort could they succeed in establishing wages at a 
standard that would permit them to preserve their homes and enjoy the 
comforts to which they and their families were entitled, but from the ros- 
trum he eloquently espoused their cause, appealing to the public conscience 
to aid in the crusade for shorter working time, improved shop conditions, 
and the correction of abuses that had crept insidiously into industrial life 
and sapped the strength of those who toiled. Especially solicitous was he 
for the welfare of his own craftsmen, and he impressed upon them the neces- 
sity of co-operating with him in an effort to place the printing busine-ss on 
a broader plane, so that both the workers and the employers could derive a 
just remuneration for their work. 

When the draft of the first scale of prices of the Printers' Union was 
presented for consideration. President Greeley gave expression to these ideas 
on the subject in the Tribune of September 3, 1850: "There ought obvi- 
ously to be some uniform standard or scale to be appealed to in case of dif- 
ference as to the proper compensation for any work done. Anarchy, 
uncertainty and chaos on this subject are all against the fair, regular, live- 
and-let-live employer, who wants good work done by good workmen, and is 
willing to pay for it : and benefit only the niggard who calculates to enrich 
himself by grinding the face of the poor and robbing labor of its honest due. 



All we ask is a reasonable and explicit scale of prices, agreed to by employers 
and jonrneymen, and binding until both parties consent to a change. Such 
a one may now be had if the honorable and fair-dealing employers will con- 
fer with the journeymen in establishing it." In the following November 
the Printers' Union held a mass meeting, at which there was a thorough 
discussion of the proposed scale. ^Ir. Greeley attended and made a vigorous 
speech in favor of the proposition for uniform wages. He declared that the 
matter ought to be brought to a decision, and if the journeymen failed to 
enforce their rates they should establish a model printing office to print 
books, pamphlets, newspapers, and all sorts of publications, and work for 
themselves as a co-operative society. They had met for work, he said, and 
not for talk, and he hoped they would do something effectual before they 
separated, as it was high time to bring the existing system to an end. The 
scale was finally adopted and went into ett'ect in February, 1851, at which 
time Mr. Greeley printed a strong editorial in its favor, and it was accepted 
l)y the great majority of the employing printers. 

President Greeley served the union faithfully and well throughout his 
term, and he also represented the organization in the Congress of Trades, 
the central association of workingmen that was organized in this city in 
1850. He retired from office on January 4, 1851. His official call for the 
meeting that was held on that date contained this announcement: "The 
First Annual Ball of the Union comes off' at Tripler Hall Tuesday evening, 
January 7, 1851." 



6 



PROGRAMME 



OVERTURE 



Prof. Max Schmidt and Orchestra 



TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION No. 6 



President James Tole 



VIOLIN SELECTION— a) "Meditation" (Thais) 

b) "Adoration" - 

Miss Marie Deutscher 
Accompanist, Mr. Herbert Braham 



Massenet 
Borowski 



"HORACE GREELEY AND THE CAUSE OF LABOR" 
Senator Albert J. Beveridge, of Indiana 

ORCHESTRA SELECTIONS 

"HORACE GREELEY, THE JOURNALIST" 

Mr. William H. McElroy, former Editor of the New York Tribune 



SOPRANO SOLO, "The Lark" - . _ _ 

Mme. Alma Webster Powell 
Accompanist, Mr. A. Judson Powell 



Bishop 



ORCHESTRA SELECTIONS 



"HORACE GREELEY, THE MAN" 

Mr. Andrew McLean, Editor of the Brooklyn Citizen 



•■.•:ji-*"tt»s»'; 



i 






. \ 





wmmM'^mm' Mmmm 



— ♦*•! 




w/a« admitted a -Mtmier of thf Neuis-YerK Mlrintcts' iDlmon, 
/. /^cra. 



v^iiL 




y 



A Reproduction of Card No. 1, Issued by Horace Greeley 



8 



c^ddress of the Chairman 

JAMES TOLE 
President of Typographical Union No. 6 

It is fitting' that Typoiiraphical Union No. 6 should today bring to a 
close the three-days' series of celebrations of the birth of Horace Greeley — 
its first president. Greeley "was noted for many things, but we wish to 
remember him as Horace Greeley the printer! What emotions are stirred 
by the mere ntterance of those simple words! From 1850 to 1911, in the 
coimting- of time, is but the passing of a shadow. Yet in the fleeting of 
years nations and peoples have run the gamut of change ; heroes have dis- 
ported their laurel wreaths and passed away ; statesmen and great men in 
all lines of endeavor have enjoyed the sweets of their greatness, and have 
then stepped from the gaze of the moment. But we have been endowed 
with the blessed faculty of memory — that memory which at bidding con- 
jures to the mind the glories of the past and maintains our veneration of 
those to whose examples we owe so much. 

It is, therefore, with more than pride and gratitude that we of the 
printing craft speak and think of Horace Greeley as a printer. Should 
we not be proud, indeed, to remember that in the hour of his greatest 
triumphs he, too, was proud that he was a printer? 

And how grateful are we that the first line written in the glorious his- 
tory of our organization emanated from so great a mind. For on January 
1, 1850 — sixty-one years ago — the New York Printers' Union was organ- 
ized, and Greeley was its first president. 

The inspiring figure of Horace Greeley has surely spurred on to ambi- 
tious heights many of our craftsmen who followed him, and who themselves 
have attained to high honors in the land. Notable names might be men- 
tioned to those who, like the subject of the day, left the printers' case to 
take their places in the highest intelligence of the day. 

The printers' trade has been described as "the art preservative." It 
is more — it is the avenue through which M'as approached the wonderful 
career of this immortal American, whose impress upon the social and politi- 
cal history of our country is "WT:-itten in lines of grateful remembrance. It 
may be that when the present fades away in the shadows of the past — 
when the children of the future shall have become the moulders of the 
nation's destiny, when the press of new and strange things fills the public 
mind — it may be that the world at large will but hazily think of the com- 
manding intellect of the printer in honor of whose memory we are now 
assembled. 

But the "art preservative of all arts" — the art of which he was so 

9 



ardent a disciple— keeps forever the indelible record of his life, forever 
furnishing deepest inspiration, encouraging ambition to great achievements. 

No grander character springs from history's pages than this man, who, 
first perceiving the need of reforms in trade conditions then existing was 
the first to set about effecting those reforms. No imion printer of the 
present day can fail to appreciate the efforts of this pioneer to establish 
the craft upon a basis deserving the respect of the commimity. Who shall 
say that the widespreading influence and power of the International Typo- 
graphical Union are not due to the energies of those who laid our founda- 
tions more than half a century ago? 

The man who begun by putting into type the thoughts of others, who 
later aspired even to the highest honor within the gift of his countrymen 
—was a printer. Never forgetting his early training and associations in a 
printing office, it is a matter of record that among his most active work in 
New York City was that in the direction of elevating his chosen craft, and 
the success of his labors is now evidenced in the position of influence of the 
{.resent union of 7,000 members, of which he was the first president— a 
union then of 27 members. 

Since the stirring days of his activities in our ranks others have ap- 
peared and performed their alloted duties among men ; men and times and 
conditions have changed; adversities have been met and conquered; we 
have been torn by strife and at times have been forced almost to the last 
issue in order to maintain our integrity. But throughout it all— even in the 
darkest hour, when hope was ebbing low— there was always before us the 
indomitable spirit of the man who set our ship afloat, the man who knew 
how to battle for right, whose fearlessness and determination are today the 
pride and glory of every American union printer. 

Fitting it is, then, that on this day, in various parts of the country, 
assemblages such as this one have gathered together to pay tribute to the 
memory of this great American. Men of the journalist profession are 
today extolling the qualities of the genius whose magic has widened the 
scope of their endeavors, and whose name is linked forever with the highest 
and purest ideals. They will speak reverently of him not only as the lead- 
ing editor of his time, as the greatest power in journalism of his day, but 
also as an astute statesman, a true and keen observer of the trend of events. 

Journalist, statesman, thinker, reformer, man of affairs he was, leaving 
behind him the ineffaceable record of his greatness! But our fondest 
thought of him is of the man in all his simple earnestness, the worker in the 
ranks of his fellow men, ever striving for the general uplift of mankind 
and thinking of himself merely as Horace Greeley— the printer. 



10 



oAddress by Hon. A. J. Beveridge 

"Horace Greeley and the Cause of Labor" 

The labor problem is the fundamental problem. Believing this, Horace 
Greeley was, in his time, the prophet of a brighter day for those who toil. 
The great journal which he founded became, in a critical period, the trum- 
pet of American conscience; yet even above his fame as one of the most 
brilliant journalists the world has produced stands his renown as a cham- 
pion of the rights of labor. 

The welfare of men, women, and children who must eat their bread in 
the sweat of their faces was his deepest concern. Wise counsellor of the 
toiling masses, he also was a fearless fighter to better their conditions. What 
Horace Greeley believed in, that he fought for. 

Even in his early manhood Horace Greeley saw that simple and sublime 
truth that the laborer is not merely a commodity, but a human being, and 
therefore that every phase of the labor problem can be solved only from 
this Christian viewpoint. 

The old and savage theory that the workingman is merely merchandise 
like a sack of flour or a bucket of coal or a threshing machine; that the 
life energies of man, woman and child should be bought in a labor market 
at the lowest price which the competition of hunger made possible; that 
the employer need not think of the employee as a human being but only as 
a working animal to be used until exhausted and then cast aside — that idea 
is the child of brutal barbarism. 

It came down to us from the hideous past. It has built more hovels and 
prevented the building of more homes ; placed more broken human beings 
in their graves and filled the abiding places of mankind with more misery 
and woe than all the wars that have cursed the world. This apparently is 
extreme ; yet it is but a carefully guarded statement of facts established by 
history and statistics. 

To Horace Greeley this idea of human labor was horrible. It would be 
better for the Nation and all the world if the master minds directing the 
material forces of our time could see this as Horace Greeley saw^ it. 

It would be better if the principle of brotherhood should enter into all 
our industry and commerce, making human the harsh principle of commer- 
cialism—the principle of profit at any cost, of gain at any sacrifice, even 
the sacrifice of human happiness and life. 

And, indeed, more and more is this transpiring. 

More and more the principle of brotherhood is making its conquest of 
our industrial and commercial life. 

11 



More and more the idea that the laborer is a human being serving his 
employer in fellowship for their mutual welfare is overcoming the idea that 
the workingman is a mere tool, a senseless mechanism to be used only for 
his employer's profit imtil his industrial effectiveness is gone and then 
thrown helpless, hopeless and ruined into the great human scrapheap like 
a wrecked machine or ashes of burned-out fuel. 

For the present progress and final triumph of the idea of the laborer as 
a human being as much if not more credit is due Hbraee Greeley than to 
any other single American intellect. His declaration that "Man was not 
made merely to eat, work and sleep ' ' went to the hearts of his countrymen 
when he uttered it and comes to us today like the burning words of the 
Hebrew prophets. 

His battlecry was "A place for every man and a man for every place." 
He declared that "Dives might perhaps give Lazarus a steady job of 
oakum-picking, or even gardening, in order to keep the crumbs about his 
table for his dogs exclusively, without at all recognizing the essential 
brotherhood between them or doing anything to vindicate it." 

For an hour I might quote such utterances^ of Horace Greeley. But he 
did not stop with these splendid generalities. With the vigor of conviction 
he gave them point and substance by concrete plans for labor's betterment. 

He was among the greatest of the advocates of organized labor. He saw 
npt only the inhumanity that the toiler suffered from want of organization ; 
saw not only that the disorganization of labor and the organization of cap- 
ital made possible "man's inhimianity to man" which "makes countless 
thousands mourn," but also he saw that lack of organization among labor- 
ers caused incredible waste and loss. 

It was Horace Greeley who declared that ' ' The aggregate waste of labor 
and faculty for want of organization in any year exceeds the cost of any 
war for five years, ruinous and detestable as all war is. It is palpable 
fatuity and criminal waste of the divine bounty to let this go on intermin- 
ably." 

And so Horace Greeley preached the righteousness and wisdom of the 
organization of labor. He was our great American champion of the brother- 
hood of toil. Not even today does any economist more thoroughly under- 
stand the philosophy of the organization of labor than HV^race Greeley 
understood it three-quarters of a century ago. And no man today expounds 
with more guarded thoughtfulness or brilliant argument the common sense 
and beneficence of organized labor than did this journalistic tribune of the 
people from early manhood to the very sunset of his life. 

He thought, spoke and fought for improved labor conditions in every 
phase of labor's activity and life. He believed labor entitled to higher 
wages. Horace Greeley thought that labor, wliich, jointly with capital, 
produces this wealth, should get an increased and increasing share of it. 

Even in that day Greeley was shocked at the lightning-like accumula- 
tion of riches in the hands of a few who did little to earn them and the 

12 



ii[)pallino- increase of the thousands who asked only an opportunity to work 
that they might eat. 

No clearer light ever has been thrown on unjustifiable industrial and 
financial inequalities than Horace Greeley's remorseless analysis; few 
stronger denunciations of this wicked condition ever were pronounced since 
the time when the Divine Equalizer gave to mankind his sacred message 
two thousand years ago. 

But in nearly all he said and proposed for the welfare of the working- 
man, Greeley was carefully practical ; he did not propose to cure between 
morning and nightfall all the injustices we have inherited from the begin- 
ning of time. 

But there were some things upon which he did insist as immediately 
necessary and not to be compromised. One of these was a shortening of the 
laborer's working day. 

At that time it was both law and usage to employ labor at the lowest 
possible point to which the fear of starvation could drive wages, and then 
compel the laborer to work as many hours as the employer chose without 
consultation or consent of the man who did the work. 

So laborers were compelled to work twelve and fourteen hours, and for 
even longer periods, every working day. Greeley proposed to shorten this 
period of toil, either by agreement or by law, to a maximum of ten hours 
a day. The employers thought this meant their business injury — even 
their bankruptcy. Greeley showed them, instead, that shorter hours and 
higher wages meant the employers' increased prosperity. 

It was the same conflict between a blind and sordid selfishness on the 
one hand and a wise, common-sense and humanitarianism on the other hand 
that occurred in England a few years earlier, when Shaftesbury and Sad- 
dler and the other British labor reformers began to fight for the idea of the 
laborer as a human being. But no English reformer ever put the argument 
for shortening hours of labor more compellingly than did the American 
Greeley. 

Aside from the economic folly of an unlimited working day, its crass 
injustice shocked Greeley 's honest soul. Of this stupid wrong he said : "It 
would be as sensible and just to prescribe that a pound of meat or sugar 
or coffee should consist of just as many ounces as the buyer should see fit, 
after the price had been settled, to exact, or that a bushel of grain should 
consist of an indefinite number of quarts, as that a day's work should con- 
sist of ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen hours' faithful labor, just as the 
purchaser of that labor should think proper to require." 

The fact that in nearly fifty trades there is at the present time an eight- 
hour day by agreement between employers and their organized employees ; 
that as a result there is an increased and better product, a sturdier, happier 
and more enlightened laboring class ; that there are more homes and fewer 
hovels for these laborers, and that those homes have more books, music and 
comforts than ever before, is due to this humane agitation for a shorter 

13 



day of labor, of which Horace Greelev was one of the first and ureatest 
American apostles, and to the stead}^, intelligent efforts of organized labor, 
of which Horace Greeley was one of the first and greatest American 
champions. 

Child labor is America's peculiar industrial shame. It is a crime against 
manhood labor — every child laborer at childhood wages takes the place of 
a man laborer at manhood wages. 

It is a crime against the humane business man — his goods, made by man- 
hood labor at manhood wages, must meet his competitors' goods made by 
child labor at childhood wages. 

It is a crime against childliood — every little one has an inalienable, a 
sacred, right to grow into sound-bodied, clear-brained, pure-souled maturity. 

It is a crime against society ; it pours into our citizenship a stream of 
people weakened in body and mind. 

It is an insult to our religion, whose founder said : ' ' Suffer little chil- 
dren to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom 
of God." 

Horace Greeley was against it. Even in his day, when greed had 
scarcely beg:un to chain us to this body of death, he sought to restrain it. 
It was Horace Greeley who declared : ' ' The State has a right to see and 
ought to see that the frames of the rising generation are not shattered nor 
their constitutions undermined by excessive toil. She should do this for her 
own sake as well as for Humanity's. She has a vital interest in the strength 
and vigor of those who are to be her future fathers and mothers, her de- 
fenders in war, her cultivators and artisans in peace. * * * ^ov what- 
ever service it may be necessary to employ labor * * * there will always 
be found an abundance of adults if proper inducements are offered." 

Thus spoke Horace Greeley when child labor in America was a pleasant 
))astime compared with the black brutality of child labor in America today. 

What would he say now if he could see the reeking sweatshops, the 
clouded coal breakers, the thundering mills where scores of thousands of 
little ones are being sacrificed to Mammon in the name of a false prosperity. 

Here is how he summed up his unanswerable arguments for a higher 
estate for those who toil : 

.''A better social condition, enlarged opportunities for good, an atmos- 
phere of hmnanity and hope, would insure a nobler and truer character, 
and that the dens of dissipation will clear to leave those whom a proper 
education has qualified and whom excessive toil has not disqualified for the 
improvement of liberty and leisure. 

"Our Eden is before us, not behind us," said Horace Greeley. And 
that is true. It is a long, long march before us and we can, reach it as all 
marching armies reach their destination, only by a step at a time. 

There are those who are impatient with this slow progress — they want 
to reach the end with a single stride. Let us not blame them, for hard 
conditions justify their impatience.. 

14 



There are those who resist auy forward step whatever— they think 
humanity's advance means their financial loss. Let us not blame them 
either, but merely pity them that the lust of gain has blinded them to the 
fellowship of man. 

:\rost of the labor reforms which Greeley proposed and for which he 
fought already have been realized in part and ultimately and soon will be 
j-ealized entirely. 

The ten-hour working day for which Greeley battled, against the un- 
limited working day of his time, now has grown into the eight-hour day 
froiu the same arguments and facts which Greeley iLsed. It ought to be 
universal in all trades. 

From ocean to ocean organized labor is now a fact as permanent as the 
Government itself. 

the lioly crusade against child labor now moving militantly forward 
v.-ill not cease until this stain is wiped entirelv from our flao- 

ill short, the day is dawning when the evils that Greeley denounced and 
the principal reforms which he proposed ^^^ll be accomplished, and the mul- 
tiplying millions who produce the wealth of the land in peace and carry its 
muskets^ in war will more largely enjoy life, liberty and pursuit of happi- 
ness jwhich is their inalienable right. 

4nd when the sun of that day is fully above the horizon, its glad light 
will Ireveal Horace Greeley as the heroic figure of that notable epoch for 
those who toil— Horace Greeley at once that epoch's prophet, philosopher, 
orator and soldier of the common good. 



15 




HORACE GREELEY 



c^ddress by W^illiam H. McElroy 

Horace Greeley As a Journalist" 

Oil the 17th of Aiioust, 1831, Horace Greeley, then twenty years old, 
came to New York City looking for work. He carried his entire fortune- 
upwards of ten dollars-in his pocket. He knew nobody, he bore letters 
of nitrodiiction to no citizen, desirable or undesirable. His nearest friend 
was two hundred miles away. Nevertheless the boy was hardly to be 
pitied. For he resolutely declined to allow poverty to blight him. " On the 
contrary, he forced it to bless him by using it as a spur to worthy endeavor 
Lackmg visible friends the voice of God in his own soul must have cheered 
him with the assurance that he could enlist in his service if he chose-and 
young Horace Greeley chose-friends invisible but most powerful-a goodly 
company, composed of trustworthiness, industry, perseverance, patience 
courage. ' 

The sister of another prominent American told me this story of her 
brother. He had risen from poverty and obscurity to riches and honor had 
become one of the foremost men of his country. One afternoon as she' was 
sitting M-ith him in his library his son came in. The son was a gay youn- 
man of fa.shion and something of a ''sport." He had been out driving and 
entered the library jauntily, carrying his whip in his hand. His father 
gazed at him a moment and then said, with a sigh, "Jack, do you know that 
I am mchned to pity you?" Jack, -young, handsome, without a care an 
heir to a fortune, naturally was amazed. "Why in the world do you pity 
me. father!" he asked. "Well, my son," his father explained, "I am 
mclmed to pity you because you will never have the benefit of the disad- 
vantages under which I labored at your age." Horace Greeley, in the days 
of his youth, had the benefit of a number of first-rate disadvantages. 

In his essay on Representative Men, Mr. Emerson writes- "When 
Nature removes a great man people explore the horizon for a successor But 
none comes and none will. His class is extinguished with him " But the 
passing away of some great men does not seem the extinguishment of their 
class. They go, but their class survives. That is to say, sooner or later they 
are succeeded by men who remind us of them, who perform the sort of work 
which they performed. But it was emphatically true of Horace Greeley 
that -his class perished with him"; that we shall not see his like ao-ain 
He was not only a great man but a great man of a rare sort. He has been 
studied from many points of view but has not been adequately painted for 
his was a personal equation of which it may be said what Daniel Webster 
said of Eloquence: "Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way 
they cannot express it." ^ ^ > 

17 



The theme which has been assigned me, Horace Greeley as a Journalist, 
does not call for a survey of his career from all points of view, but 
simply for a consideration of the character and significance of his work in 
his chosen profession. ^lany circumstances combined to make him what 
he was — the foremost journalist of his generation. He was preeminently 
a manly man, a man who did his own. thinking and not thinkinu' which he 
inherited or was dictated to him. lie was generously endowed with moral 
energy, intellectual resources and sympathy, of the affirmative sort, for all 
sorts and conditions of men, especially for the poor and oppressed. He 
loved work as ardently as Romeo loved Juliet. It was given him to labor 
in the most important, and therefore the most stimulating, newspaper field 
in the United States. He flourished at a time when there was special need 
of him — a time when the supply of food for the mind and soul furnished 
by the newspapers of the country was sadly unequal to the demand. Just 
LH John was called to go crying in the wilderness, "bearing witness to the 
Light," Horace Greeley would seem to have been called to serve as guide, 
philosopher, friend to thousands of his countrymen all over the land. His 
equipment for such a task included, among its essentials, the pen of a fluent, 
forcible writer. It was wickedly said of a certain rhapsodical poet that 
He had nothing to say but he said it splendidly. Mr. Greeley had much 
to say that was well worth listening to on a variety of topics of general 
interest, and he knew how to say it. He was a master of what has been 
called the art of putting things. His literary style was as frank and unaf- 
fected as his own nature. Sometimes, in the heat of a political canvass or 
in reply to a wanton attack or in the stress of one of his numberless con- 
troversies, his output of heated superlatives was very large. Charging bis 
ink with vitriol he indulged iii imprecatory adjectives and substantives, 
losing si'iht of the sound old caution, 

"Strong without rage, without overflowing full." 

His brother journalists of the press of the metropolis, William Cullen 
liryant, Charles A. Dana and Henry J. Raymond, all college-bred men, 
excelled him as a wi'iter, in certain particulars. Bryant, the poet-editor, 
was more profound and polished, Dana was his superior in versatility and 
scholarship, Raymond was more brilliant, more philosophic. But none of 
them surpassed him in mental robustness, none in pungent unambiguous 
expression. When he undertook to call a spade a spade, he did so with 
precision — in terms wliich rendered it impossible for the reader to suppose 
that he was inferring to a shovel. 

It is to be added, in enumerating the sources of Mr. Greeley's strength 
as a journalist, that after the Tribune became well established he made a 
large number of lecture tours. He addressed lyceums, agricultural societies, 
mechanics' institutes, chambers of commerce and other bodies in various 
parts of the land, and in addition did his share of stump-speaking here and 
there. He was thus brought into personal contact with the people, and 
gained, at first hand, an insight into their needs and aspirations which added 

18 



sensibly to his practical efficiency. He was proficient in few of the arts 
of oratory and still was a popular speaker— your mere elocutionist, how- 
ever accomplished, is not listened to as attentively as the man behind the 
^un, although the man distinctly falls "below Demosthenes or Cicero." 
AVhen Mr. Greely rose to speak, his hearers said to one another, "We will 
now hear from the man behind the Tiibioic/' I have said that, although 
not an orator (in the academic sense of the term;, he was, nevertheless, a 
popular speaker. 

Andrew D. AVhite, the distinguished ex-president of Cornell University, 
said of one of ]\[r. Greeley's speeches which he was privileged to hear (and 
^Ir. White was a good judge of such matters) : "I never heard a more 
simple, strong, lucid use of the English language." That was Horace 
(ireeley, with tongue or wnth pen— simple, strong and lucid. 

I have thus glanced — there is only time for a glance — at funda- 
)nental things which went to the making of Greeley the journalist and ren- 
dered him an influence whose extent and force it would be difficult to over- 
estimate. From the Atlantic to the Pacific he came to be looked up to as 
the chief educator of his profession, the leading moulder of public opinion, 
an inspiration to wholesome, progressive, broad-gauge living. jMore than 
that, the masses, as they became acquainted with his personality, grew fond 
of him : for they felt, and felt truly, that 

"His heart was made of sim])le, manly stuff, 
As home-spun as their own." 

It is to be noted that these parishioners of his did not invariably say 
amen, to his utterances. Now and then they distinctly disagreed with him. 
Now and then they made light of some scheme of his for accelerating the 
approach of the millennium. Xow and then they resented his attitude 
touching party principles or policies or leaders. Xow and then they called 
him a visionary. Not a few of them repudiated his war policy and greeted 
his signing of Jefferson Davis' bail bond with "curses red with uncommon 
wrath." But one thing they did not do— they never really doubted him, 
never withdrew their confidence from him. Their faith in the man was 
founded on a rock. So it is that what Lowell said of another illustrious 
American is (Mii]>hatically true of Horace Greeley — he was a "standing 
testimonial to the cumulative power of character." 

Mr. Greeley edited tliree newspapers before starting the Trihunr — pve- 
Inninary flights to test the machine. The New Yorl-er was his first venture 
— a weekly, so the prospectus ran — devoted to "current literature, politics 
and general news." It beuan in ^Iarch,l884, and was discontinued in Sep- 
tember, 1841. Its demise was due largely to the distressing circumstance 
that very many of its subscribers never paid their bills. In his "Recollec- 
tions of a Busy Life," Mr. Greeley states that when the paper stopped these 
delinc[uents. who liecame permanent in their delinquency, owed him ten 
thousand dollars. (It would appear from this that there were some bad 
people in New York even in "the good old days.") i\Ir. Greeley's next 

in 



iiewspaper was the Jeffersonian, a weekly campaign sheet in the interest of 
the AA'^hig party. Price fifty cents a year. It was published in 1838-39 and 
was succeeded in 1840 by another and much more important campaign 
paper, the Log Cahin. That was the year when AVilliam Henry Harrison 
was elected President of the United States, and it is scarcely too much to 
assert that the Log Cahin did as much to elect him as any other agency em- 
ployed in the canvass. It was, in fact, an ideal campaign paper, made up 
of short, telling editorials, trenchant and witty paragraphs; wood-cuts, 
crude but entertaining and effective, and "Tippecanoe" songs, words and 
music, so "catchy" and so expressive of the popular feeling that the country 
became vociferously vocal during that Harrison campaign. With the Log 
Cabin Mr. Greeley completed his newspaper novitiate ; for on the tenth of 
April, 1841, he issued the first number of the journal which was to win him 
imperishable fame^ — the New York Tribune. 

Now, all these papers, differing from one another in some respects, had 
one noteworthy characteristic in common. They were clean papers, whole- 
some papers, papers which did not pander, papers which declined to make 
friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. In his "Recollections," Mr. 
Greeley directs attention to the fact that the Jeffersonian "carefully 
eschewed abuse, scurrility and railing accusation." The Log Cabin, which 
he states, was "more lively and less sedately argumentative" than its prede- 
cessor, was like it in avoiding abuse, scurrility and railing accusation. 
That it was determined not to strike any foul blows is attested by a letter 
which Mr. Greeley wrote to one of his correspondents. In this letter the 
correspondent is informed that "Articles assailing the personal character of 
Mr. Van Buren [who was General Harrison's competitor for the Presi- 
dency] or of his supporters cannot be printed in the Cabin." As for the 
Tribune, it made clear in its prospectus that it was bent upon conforming its 
conduct to a high moral standard. This is the essential part of the pros- 
pectus, "The Tribune, as its name imports, will labour to advance the in- 
terests of the people and to promote their moral, social and political well- 
being. The immoral and degrading police reports, advertisements and other 
matter, which have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading 
penny papers, will be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared 
to render it worthy of the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined and 
a welcome visitor at the fireside. " 

Words are always cheap, but ]\Ir. Greeley conducted the Tribune in 
accordance with what he thus promised. He made it the conservator of 
whatever things are pure, lovely and of good report. He made it hospitable 
to science, to literature and the other arts, fine or useful. Its colmnns were 
open to the discussion of any cause — including some vagaries — which was 
decent. It was a powerful and persistent champion of the rights of labor. 
Such was its devotion to freedom and such its efficiency in battling against 
her enemies, that Harper's Weekly, in its leader on the death of Mr. Greeley, 
did not hesitate to declare that "No single force in educating the nation for 

20 



the terrible struggle with slavery was so powerful as the Tribune. '^ Horace 
Greeley, as thus revealed, was a good and faithful servant of the people, a 
stalwart promoter of the civilization which really civilizes. 

A certain publication was once characterized as a newspaper "for which 
there is always a market but never an enthusiasm." Mr. Greeley, while 
not lacking a decent respect for the almighty dollar, aimed primarily to 
furnish his readers with a paper which would command their enthusiasm. 
''To do good," he said in one of his occasional addresses, "is the proper 
business of life; to qualify for earnestness and efficienc}^ in doing good, is 
the true end of Education ; the sum of all the knowledge in the child is the 
consciousness that he lives not for himself, but for his Creator and his race." 
Mr. Greeley's course as a journalist was in harmony with that exalted con- 
ception of the purpose of human life. He did, indeed, labor strenuously 
to make his paper marketable — an eight-hour law for others but a sixteen- 
hour law for Greeley, would seem to have been his way of disposing of one 
phase of the labor question — but it was not in the man to strive for material 
success at the expense of principle. It followed, of course, that the assump- 
tion that a newspaper is a "business enterprise," never impressed him. 
His career justified the inference that in his view a newspaper is not a 
business enterprise in any sense which puts it in a different class, so far as 
moral obligation is concerned, from that in which the business enterprise 
of preaching the Gospel belongs. In other words, it was Mr. Greeley's con- 
viction that the editor of a newspaper in his sanctinn in the discharge of 
the duties of Ins vocation, is just as amenable to the Ten Commandments, 
the Golden Rule, the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount as the minister 
in his pulpit in the discharge of the duties of liis vocation. It behooves the 
minister to preach the truth as he sees it, whether men will hear or whether 
they will forbear. It no less behooves the editor — so Mr. Greeley held, and 
ho "put his creed into his deed" — to print only what he himself regards as 
reputable, whether men take or refuse to take his paper. 

Mr. Greeley had a decided opinion on the much-mooted question as to 
what a newspaper ought and ought not to print. One of the current New 
York dailies takes for its motto, "All the News that's Fit to Print"; the 
motto of another is "All the News that Is News." Charles A. Dana, in an 
address before a newspaper association, defined news to be "anything which 
interests the people." He went on to say that "Wliatever Divine Prov- 
idence permits to occur I am not too proud to print. ' ' ^Ir. Greeley, on the 
other hand, in a letter written to Mr. Dana while that gentleman was a 
member of the Tribune staff, exclaimed, "Oh, my friend, the wisdom which 
teaches us what should not be said, that is the hardest to be acquired of 
all!" Mr. Greeley did not believe in reporting "whatever Divine Provi- 
dence permitted to occur." He drew the line somewhere. Divine Provi- 
dence permitted Sodom and Gomorra to occur. But, judging from the con- 
victions which ]\rr. Greeley expressed on the subject of newspaper publicity, 
he would have held that an unvarnished report of the doings at Sodom and 

21 



Goinorra, when the lid was off, would have been eligible only for the waste- 
basket. 

^Ir. Greeley was profoundly in earnest. There was nothinu' perfunctory, 
nothino- lukewarm in his journalistic work. His utterances had their root in 
strong convictions. Henry J. Raymond was credited with sayinji' to a friend 
that he himself never finished a sentence without a profound feeling' that i^ 
was only partially true. Mr. Greeley was too thorough-o-oing, too decided 
in his opinions, to have exj^erienced such a feeling. It is related of Charles 
Sumner that once in the United States Senate, while he was indulgino- in 
a peculiarly fierce philippic against slavery, a fellow Senator ventured to 
ask him to consider the other side. "Sir," thundered Sumner, "there isn't 
any other side." When Greeley sat down to express his views on Slavery, 
Protection, Whigism, Republicanism, Henry Clay, or on any of his other 
favorite themes, there wasn't any other side,, so far as he was concerned. He 
wrote with the serene confidence of one who is enunciating axioms, and. 
although his utterances did not invariably harmonize with one another — 
the utterances of progressive men seldom do— there was an air of something 
very like infallibility about them. It was not unnatural, therefore, that the 
Tribune came to be regarded by many of its readers as of only less author- 
ity than the Bible itself. ]\Ir. Depew, at the fiftieth anniversary of the 
founding of the Tribune, l)rought out this circumstance in his own charac- 
teristically racy way. We cpTote from his address: " 'Why do you look so 
gloomy?' said a traveler riding- along the highway in the Western Reserve, 
in the old anti-slavery days, to a farmer who was sitting moodily on a fence. 
'Because,' said the farmer, 'my Democratic friend next door got the best of 
me in an argument last night. But when I get m}' semi-weekly Tribune to- 
morrow I'll knock the foundations all out from under him.' When I was 
a lad in the country," Mr. Depew continued, "I have frequently observed a 
man drive in ten miles to the village post-office for his weekly Tribune, and 
the same person, when term closed, came up to the academy for his boy. I 
could see no difference in the affectionate tenderness and eager pleasure 
with which he grasped his paper or embraced his son." 

AVhat a political journalist Horace Greeley was ! In a popular govern- 
ment such as ours, a government through parties, politics is virtually a con- 
tinuous performance. While he was as yet l)ut a little more than a baby he 
became innnersed in politics and he remained innnersed in them as long as 
he lived. He may not, indeed, have compiled election returns in his cradle, 
but he informs lis that he was "an ardent politician when not yet half old 
enough to vote." In his "Recollections" he recollects more politics than 
anything else. He came to know the political complexion of the entire 
country about as thoroughly as a ward leader knows the politics of his ward. 
One of the stories illustrative of his genius for remembering election figures 
relates that a messenger came into the Tribiou office tlu^ night of a Presi- 
dential election with telegrams, one of which read that a certain small town 
in Southern Ohio had given the Republican ticket a majority of two hun- 

99 



dred. ^Iv. Greeley listened while the telegram was being read and then 
observed, "that to^\^l gave us two hundred and twenty majority the last 
time." H'e was an indefatigable and enthusiastic party man, striving with 
all his might for Whig or Republican success. Nevertheless, he refused to 
allow politics to interfere with the exercise of his private judgment. To 
employ a political phrase, politics never got the delegates away from his 
independence. He permanently retained the captaincy of his own soul. 
"I accept unreservedly,"" he once wrote, "the views of no nuin, dead or 
living. ' The master has said it, ' was never conclusive with me. Even though 
T have found him right nine times I do not take his tenth proposition on 
trust; unless that also be proved sound I reject it."" In accordance with this 
unreserved declaration of independence was the fair warning which he ad- 
dressed to whom it might concern, in starting the Tribiuie, that the paper 
was not going to be a subservient party organ. "Earnestly beli'^nng, " 
he frankly said, "that the political revolution which has called William 
Henry Harrison to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation was a triumph of 
Right, Reason and Public Good over Error and Sinister Ambition, the 
Tribune will give to the new Administration a frank and cordial but manly 
and independent support, judging it always by its acts and commending 
those only so far as they shall seem calculated to subserve the great end of 
all government— the welfare of the People." To the same effect, but more 
emphatic, is the accoimt which he gives in his "Recollections" of the place 
in New York journalism which he intended that the Tribune should make 
for itself. "My leading idea was," he explains, "the establishment of a 
journal removed alike from servile partisanship, on the one hand, and from 
gagged, mincing neutrality on the other. * * * i believed there was 
a happy medium between these extremes — a position from which a journalist 
might openly and heartily advocate the principles and commend the meas- 
ures of that party to which his convictions allied him, yet frankly dissent 
from its course on a particular question, and even denounce its candidates 
if they were shown to be deficient in capacity or (far worse) in integrity." 
Roscoe Conkling once affirmed that he did not know how to belong to a 
party a little. INIr. Greeley fought a good fight for the Whig party and for 
the Republican party. Neither of these organizations had in its service a 
stouter champion than he. But, although he did not belong to them a 
"little," but a great deal, he did not belong to either so much as to hesitate 
to criticize party measures or party representatives whenever the conclusion 
was forced upon him that they deserved criticism. "To thine own self be 
true" was an admonition to whch he ever rendered implicit obedience. 

I have thiLS touched upon the leading sources of Mr. Greeley's conspic- 
uous success as a journalist. It was a logical success— the natural result of 
a wise use of great gifts and great opportunities. Wendell Phillips, while 
sharply assailing the newspaper press, paid it what was really a superb com- 
pliment. He gave it as his opinion that America owed to the newspapers 
one-half, if not more, of her development. It is not too much to assert that 

23 



Horace Greeley contributed in a g'reater degree than any other journalist 
of his day to that development, by his incessant activity in behalf of the 
forces which make for progress of the best sort. 

I am tempted, before concluding, to tell two stories about Mr. Greeley 
of which I am especially fond. One of them was a favorite of George 
William Curtis, and this is his version of it : 

"When Horace Greeley was in Paris he was one morning looking with 
an American friend at the pictures of the Louvre and talking of this 
country. ' ' The fact is, ' ' said ]Mr. Greeley, ' ' that what we need is a darned 
good licking." An Englishman who stood by and heard the conversation 
smiled eagerly as if he Imew a nation that would like to administer the cas- 
tigation. "Yes, sir," said he complacently, rubbing his hands with appetite 
and joining in the conversation, "that is just what you do want. " " But the 
difficulty is," continued ]\Ir. Greeley to his friend, as if he had heard noth- 
ing, "the difficulty is that there is no nation in the world that can lick us." 

The other story was told me by the late Clinton B. Fisk— for whom pos- 
sibly some of you failed to vote when he was the Prohibition candidate for 
the Presidency in 1888. I met Mr. Fisk at a Rutgers College dinner, and in 
the course of conversation Mr. Greeley was mentioned. ' ' I knew Mr. Greeley 
very well," said Mr. Fisk, "and had many a long talk with him. After 
the civil war we were accustomed when we- met to discuss it from many 
points of view. I recall an occasion when Mr. Greeley concluded all he had 
to say in regard to a certain point by remarking, 'Clinton, the more I think 
of it the more firmly convinced I become that just as soon as the war was 
over we ought to have freely and fully forgiven all our Southern brethren — 
the devil take them!' " The story illiLstrated what his war policy always 
revealed, his loving kindness toward the South, and emphasized in a droll 
way, that in spite of that loving kindness, he had become very tired of the 
Southern question. 

^Members of Typographical Union Number Six, you may well be proud 
that this illustrious American who began the battle of life as a typesetter, 
a veritable printer's devil, was one of the founders and the first president 
of your organization. You do well to celebrate the centennial of his birth, 
for to ponder upon what Horace Greeley was and did is an exercise at once 
pleasant and profitable. It is a potent incentive to worthy living. It 
refreshes our faith in human nature. It is full of encouragement to the 
}outh of our land who find themselves, as he found himself when a lad, poor 
and friendless, at the foot of the ladder of fortune. Mr. Greeley has taken 
his place in history as one of the leaders of the journalism of the nineteenth 
century. He had his eccentricities, his weaknesses, his limitations. No man 
of his day had more fun poked at him or was a more frequent target for 
caricature. But he could have disposed of his critics by saying to them 
what Cromwell said to the artist to whom he was sitting for his portrait, 
"Paint me as I am, warts and all." Cronnvell could afford to be thus 
painted because he was Cromwell. Today Horace Greeley looms large, and 

24 



his shortcomings seem but the small dust of the balance because they 
were the shortcomintis of such a man. One of his biographers asserts that 
Mr. Greeley never was a "man of the world." No, he was not: but a man 
does not have to be that sort of a man to be a man of the best kind. Indeed, 
there is the highest authority for holding that to "become as a little child" 
is to attain to what is best in manhood. Mr. Greeley possessed in its fulness 
the childlike spirit. He had a child's enthiLsiasm, a child's tenderness of 
heart, a child's confiding disposition, a child's unsophisticated simplicity. 
His life was a strenuous one, full of vicissitudes. Neglect, appreciation, joy, 
sorrow, failure, success, obscurity, fame — he experienced all of them but 
was overcome by none. He knew how to be abased and how to abound and 
in all times of his prosperity and in all times of his adversity he kept faith 
with the ideals which dominated his soul when, before he had attained to 
man 's estate, he came to New York to seek his fortune. It is as a journalist 
that I have been considering him, but because what the catechism calls "the 
chief end of man" is not achievement but character, I prefer, in closing my 
address, to contemplate Mr: Greeley apart from his vocation as a member of 
that Brotherhood of ]\Ian whose welfare he did so much to promote. When 
Walter Scott realized that for him the "inevitable hour" was about to strike 
he gave his son-in-law, Lockhart, to whom he was devotedly attached, a fare- 
well greeting, and although Sir Walter was one of the leading literary lights 
of his age. literature had no place in that valedictory. He simply said to 
Lockhart, so one of his biographers tells us, "Be a good man, my dear." If 
Horace Greeley, in response to the numberless expressions of love and ad- 
miration which his one hundredth birthday has inspired could send a mes- 
sage to you and the rest who celebrate him, we may be sure that he would 
say something wliich would make for the betterment of all classes and con- 
ditions of humanity. There was much in his sterling manhood wdiich sug- 
gested Abraham Lincoln. They had their differences in war times, but were 
ever closely allied by the fervent, unselfish patriotism which they possessed 
in common. So there is full w^arrant for believing that the centennial mes- 
sage of Horace Greeley would harmonize with, and perchance re-echo, the 
solemn admonition which Abraham Lincoln addressed to his countrymen 
from the hallowed ground of Gettysburg, "See to it that government of the 
people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth." 



25 



(iA Few of the Letters Received 



January 23, 1911. 

Greeley Centennlal Committee: 

Gentlemen:— A desire to add a meed of praise and admiration to that 
of the host of others has induced me to note a few incidents in the life of 
Horace Greeley, that grand old man whom I saw quite early in his profes- 
sional career when he was exertins: all his intellectual and physical powers 
to achieve success in estahlishing- The Netv Yorl-er in 1838, when the office 
was located in the rear building of No. 29 Ann Street. There were three 
hands besides myself— Mr. Bowe, the foreman, Mr. Winchester, and Mr. 
Swain, who set up the piece of music that always graced the last page of 
that popular newspaper. Mr. Greeley would often "lend a hand" when the 
paper was behind, by setting up a few sticksful. His bent attitude while 
standing at the case, and bobbing motion while setting type, are vividly 
impressed on my memory. If he "pied" a line, his proverbial equanimity 
was not disturbed thereby. Apropos of pie, it was his custom every Satur- 
day at noon— the paper having been printed and mailed— to provide what 
was designated as a "pie gorge," to which we were freely invited. About 
a dozen good sized pies, fresh from the famoiLS pie bakery of Russel, in 
Spruce Street, would grace the imposing-stone. Ample justice was done 
to the delicious pastries, especially by the great editor himself who, released 
from the week's toil and anxiety, gave full rein to his natural flow of humor, 
and indulged in witticisms and anecdotes that were a feast for the soul, 
besides being a digestive assistant. A feature of the entertainment to me 
—a Knickerbocker— was the Yankee accent, with the nasal intonation, that 
marked the utterances of most of the hands, who hailed from "Varmount," 
including Mr. Greeley himself, who was long a resident there. 

Notwithstanding the financial difficulties that ])eset him while publishing 
Tiie New Yorker, he never failed to pay his hands promptly every cent they 
had earned. He seemed to regard that obligation as a sacred one-, and so, 
too, with I'egard to the same obligations to the Tribiiiic printers. He was 
truly the working-man's best friend in all that the term implies, as his 
newspaper fully evidenced. I am i)i-()U(l of holding a I'nion Card of July 
6, 1850, with his signature as its first president. 

Charles Vogt, 

Card No. 54 in 1850. 



Hamilton, Bermuda, Jan. 17, 1911. 
Dear Mr. INIcCabe: 

I should be glad and proud to come to No. 6 's celebration of the Greeley 
centenary. But I ani almost a hundred years old myself, by my personal 
almanac, which has been sent forward by two attacks of the grippe, and I 
can only join you in the cordial sense of unity which never ceases to bind 
printers together. Greeley was one of the best of us, and we ought to keep 
his memory green. 

Yours sincerely, 

W. D. HOWELLS. 



EDITORIAL ROOMS 

HARPER ^ BROTHERS 

Franklin Square 

New York, January 26, 1911. 
Dear ^Mr. McCabe: 

As I live in the country and am much enfeebled by recent illness, I am 
unable to accept the kind invitation of your committee to the meeting com- 
memorating the centenary of Horace Greeley's birth. 

Along with Lincoln and old Ben Franklin, Horace Greeley ranks as a 
singular type, eminently original and individual, of the plain American; 
and it is peculiarly fitting that this centenary of his birth should be cele- 
brated under the auspices of Typographical Union No. 6, of which he was 
the first president. 

With hearty sympathy with your undertaking, 

Yours faithfully, 

H. M. Alden. 



OFFICERS, 1911 



JAMES TOLE, President 

GEO. M. O'NEILL, Vice-President 

C. M. MAXWELL, Sec'y-Treas. 
GEO. A. McKAY, Asst.-Sec'y 

S. W. GAMBLE, Organizer 

JOHN H. KELLY, Reading Clerk 

CHAS. M. CONLON, \ jos. P. REILLY, 

CHAS. H. GOVAN, I Trustees JOHN MUIR, ^ Auditors 

JAS. P. POWERS, ) EDWIN G. ROACH, 



/*? 



GREELEY COMMITTEE 



JOHN F. McCABE, Chairman 
JOHN F. LANE jqhn F. CROSSLAND 

WILLIAM F. WETZEL jamES H. DAHM, Secretary 



JUL t> 19II 






iiisilif'?!--'-^:!'^^ 




